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SCISSION represents an autonomist Marxist viewpoint.
The struggle against white skin privilege and white supremacy is key.
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"You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future.”
FIGHT WHITE SUPREMACY, SAVE THE EARTH

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Theoretical Weekends at Scission has arrived again. Last week I brought you something on the 1992 LA Uprising by the Chicago Surrealist Group. This week it is the Paris Group of the Surrealist Movement taking a look at the 2005 Uprising in Paris.Check it out. This is taking from the Surrealist Movement of the United States web site.

WARNING LIGHTS A Surrealist Statementon the Recent Riots in France

For three weeks, in the ghettos of the poor suburbs, euphemistically named “sensitive neighborhoods,” on the outskirts of the outskirts, thousands of cars were burned, public utilities devastated, troops of police deliberately attacked.

There is nothing new about what sparked these incidents: the absurd death of two adolescents seized by panic, in the course of “normal police behavior.” Comparable police blunders also occurred in the past, and nearly always lootings and burnings were the inevitable response. But such incidents were localized.

Nor is there is anything new in the methods employed or the visible targets: For many years now, notably in Alsace, cars are burned on New Year's Eve or at the time of more obscure commemorations. And for a long time schools have been vandalized by schoolboys expelled from school; buses or police cars stoned; passengers methodically robbed in public transport.

What is new today is the immediate extension of this violence, its rapid spread to the provinces, well beyond the borders of a spontaneous and unpremeditated movement.

This is a movement without explicit demands, except the resignation of a Minister of the Interior disqualified by his remarks and, as everybody knows, scorned by his superiors. This is a movement impossible to reduce to ethnic or racial demands. If the majority of the rioters are of Maghreb or African origin, some of them are Asian and French. This is also a movement irreducible to the category of youth, for the majority of the youth—unlike those of May 1968, or the demonstrations against the CIP in 1994, or the secondary school movement of last spring—, have no associations there.

This is, moreover, a movement without spirit or class consciousness—a movement typical of those common uprisings that blur conventional distinctions: a movement of "imperative revolt" due to permanent poverty and daily humiliation. But it is also a movement without strategy, a movement more prone to gaze at itself on television screens, drawing its ephemeral strength from the media coverage it produces, and thus depending on the self-censorship of information put in place to avoid "the telethon effect." It is a movement nevertheless more Luddite than playful, sustaining itself at the source of real despair, but lacking utopia, its horizon limited by bars and block towers.

For sociologists, journalists and certain revolutionaries, this movement is incomprehensible since it resists the well-oiled arguments they use to explain social movements: neither social analysis, nor the study of the composition of class succeeds in defining its specificity. These riots are made by an unidentifiable mob—rebellious bodies whose existence is reduced to bare necessity, and who have not found any other language than that of destructive gestures. Let us not fool ourselves; in everyday life many of this mob are detestable; some are numbed by religion, many alienated by consumerism, or enthusiasts of masculine values, sharing with the masters of society the stupid worship of sport (some riots were suspended during televised football games). Many are contemptible in their behavior toward women—whose absence in the riots signals an unacceptable limitation. Most of this mob would certainly not be friendly to us.

What is remarkable, however—beyond them—is their revolt. Through their actual contradictions, they represent the dark face of a vengeful social unconscious held back for too long, as those in bygone days representing the “dangerous classes.” But, at the risk of plunging back even more bitterly in their poverty, it will be necessary for them to draw on the lessons of their recent experience in order to gain lucidity. Already they have seen at work the repressive role of the imams and of Islam, mere auxiliaries to the police— as is all religion. This movement still has to get rid of all forms of puritanical and masculinist morality so that women will join them as equals—like the women fire-raisers of the Paris Commune in 1871—to take an active part in all future stuggles. Likewise, they must have done with the stupid gang rivalry that nails them to their “territories” and deprives them of a mobile offensive. And finally, they must learn to choose more directly political targets.

In a society in which all previous forms of belonging, and therefore of associated consciousness, have been wiped out, these events testify to the eruptive and uncontrollable return of the social question, firstly under an immediately negative form, that fire—emblem of all apocalypses— symbolizes. Indeed, unlike the rebellions in Los Angeles in 1965 and in 1992, the population of the districts here did not massively join the rioters. And in contrast to May ‘68 neither poetry nor brilliant ideas are on the barricades. No wildcat strike is going to spread widely with these troubles. But the rulers have been given a good hotfoot and have been forced to unmask themselves.

A democracy which, in order to face up to a quantitatively limited movement (considering the number of participants), has been obliged to put back in force an old colonial law, but also to reveal its constituent deception: that is, where the police abuse their powers, the state of emergency gives to their abuse the legitimacy that it lacks. What we long ago called "individual freedom" is today known as the “discretionary power” of the cops.

In a flash, such warning lights have revealed—during these November nights—the return of a possibility that seemed to be lost: that of throwing power into a panic even when its forces are harassed in a disorganized manner through the whole territory by a handful of forsaken social casualties. From now on, we can imagine the strength of an uprising that would—beyond the inhabitants of the ghettos—include the whole population suffering from the rise of impoverishment, and would turn into civil war against the organs of capital and the state.

Beyond recent infernos presented as the very image of a nightmare, it is time that the dream of concrete utopia is raised anew.

The prison industrial complex has the perfect love affair with the U.S. government. They are like the mistress that gets a diamond ring and the prisoners in their “care” are the spouse that is presented with a vacuum cleaner. This love affair is precisely what led to the United States claiming the title of the world’s number one jailer. The people, whose interests the government are supposed to have in mind, are bombarded with laws that are meant to incarcerate them so that the prison industry can profit. And profit they do. The prison industry makes billions of dollars annually off the destruction of American lives. Not only has the American public been abused by the prison industry’s lobbying for tougher laws that in some cases take away their lives for many years for minor offenses, but now the industry has come up with a new way to avoid paying income taxes. One private prison company, GEO Group, is bragging about their success to their investors and promising that the beds will stay full.

GEO Group is one of the largest private prison corporations operating in the United States. It is also one of the most controversial corporations whose reputation is tarnished by poor living conditions,prisoner deaths, and inmate abuses. Despite its bad reputation and the plethora of problems it has, the corporation is boasting about a 56% spike in profits to its investors this year. How did it manage such a dramatic increase in profits? Oh, that’s easy, by getting the Internal Revenue Service on board with their effort to restyle themselves as not just a corporation, but a special trust that is typically exempt from paying taxes. The group successfully argued that they should be considered a real estate investment trust or REIT. GEO along with Corrections Corporation of America claim that they should be eligible for the exemption because they are essentially renting out their property to prisoners that the government is paying for. What in the actual hell? Renters? Really? While this scheme is sure to piss off Americans it is sure to please investors; REITS are required by law to distribute at least 90% of their taxable income back to their investors. Corrections Corporation of America says that they expect to save as much as 70 million dollars in taxes this year under their new status. GEO Group reported that a revision to their taxes made them plummet from $8.5 million in the first quarter of 2012 to $881,000 in the first quarter of 2013.

In a call to investors the Vice President of GEO Group, John Hurley, also assured their investors that they are optimistic about future profits because the offender population continues to grow.

We have a longstanding partnership with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the United States Marshal Service and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE. … We continue to see meaningful opportunities for us to partner with all three of these federal agencies, notwithstanding the various issues with the federal budget, which we believe will have no material negative impact on our business. The federal bureau of prisons continues to face capacity constraints coupled with a growing offender population.

I’m sure that they American public will be thrilled to discover just how this industry is profiting off the rest of us. This is indeed a sweet deal for them. Not only does the prison industrial complex have their hand in most of the “tough on crime” legislation that is passed but now they are receiving huge tax breaks by using some slimy loophole. I find it disturbing in a time when so much emphasis is put on how much the poor people of this country are bleeding it dry with their need for food and healthcare and all of the totally unnecessary stuff they need to survive, the government continues to support corporate welfare. Make no mistake this is corporate welfare. The private prison industry makes billions and billions of dollars annually they no more need a tax break than I need a hole in my head, yet they are getting one. It’s funny isn’t it? And by funny I mean completely and utterly confusing and frustrating and pretty sickening. Like I said, it’s the perfect love affair and the big, happy government mistress just got a shiny Maserati at your expense. How do you feel about that?

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Hey, Iran, it's time to get over it and free the Baha'i Seven and to quit persecuting the Baha'i faith in general. You may wonder just what the Iranian mullahs have against the Baha'i anyway. After all the Baha'i seem pretty non threatening in general, don't they.Well unlike Jews, Christians, and often, Zoroastrians, as well, the Baha'i are not considered People of the Book by Muslims and thus they aren't in the "protected category." The Baha'i in fact are considered Islamic heretics in Iran. Iran, also says the Baha'i are agents of the "notorious" Zionists. They point to the fact that their faith is today headquartered in Haifa and has pretty good relations with the Israelis, so there. There is also the troublesome fact that the Baha'i have no priests and place "the responsibility for spiritual interpretation entirely in the hands of individuals." Ooops, this doesn't fit in real well with a State run by Mullahs and the like...whose "responsibility" is apparently to tell everyone else how to live and what to believe.A report released in March by the Baha'i International Community documented hundreds of incidents of torture, assault, arson, vandalism, abuse of schoolchildren, etc. against Baha'i since 2005 in Iran. The Baha'i World News Service writes:

"The entire situation puts the Baha'is in an impossible position because they must ask for justice and protection from the same authorities who are systematically inciting hatred against them and from a judicial system that treats virtually every Baha'i who is arrested as an enemy of the state," said Diane Ala'i, the Baha'i International Community's representative to the United Nations in Geneva.

"This report shows that attacks on Baha'is are engineered by government agents and actively encouraged by the authorities and the Muslim clergy in Iran – and that attackers are well aware that they will go unpunished," added Ms. Ala'i.

"Many of the attacks documented in the report – such as the cases of torture or assault during arrests and imprisonment – are undertaken directly by government agents," said Ms. Ala'i. "Other attacks, such as arson, cemetery desecration, and vandalism, often come in the middle of the night, by unidentified individuals.

"But in all cases, these violators need to be brought to justice, as is required by the international laws to which Iran is a party. The government's unwillingness to prosecute for these crimes, then, is yet another element in their overall campaign of religious persecution against the Baha'i minority," said Ms. Ala'i.

Earlier this week four high level UN human rights experts called on Iran to immediately release seven imprisoned Baha'i leaders.

In a press release issued on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the arrest of the seven, the four experts emphasized that the seven are held solely because of their religious beliefs, that their continued imprisonment is unjust and wrongful, and that Iran's treatment of religious minorities violates international law.

"The Iranian government should demonstrate its commitment to freedom of religion by immediately and unconditionally releasing these prisoners of conscience," said Ahmed Shaheed, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran. "These cases are apparently characterized by failures to safeguard fair trial standards and jeopardize overall religious freedom in Iran."

Joining Dr. Shaheed, with each contributing their own short statement to the press release, were El Hadji Malick Sow, head of the UN's Working Group on arbitrary detention; Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief; and Rita Izsak, the UN Independent Expert on minority issues.

"These seven Baha'is are imprisoned solely for managing the religious and administrative affairs of their community," said Mr. Malick Sow. "These persons were condemned after trials which did not meet the guarantees for a fair trial established by international law."

Ms. Izsak noted that Baha'is are Iran's largest non-Muslim religious minority. "Their existence and religious identity must be protected under the UN Declaration on Minorities," she said. "Otherwise, their right to profess and practice their own religion freely and without interference or any form of discrimination may be violated."

Dr. Bielefeldt said "Iran must ensure that Baha'is and other unrecognized minority faiths can practice their beliefs without hindrance and fear."

The seven have been sitting behind bars five years now. They have 15 years to go. The eldest among the seven, Khanjani, is 80 years old. His wife of more than 50 years passed away after his incarceration – he was unable to see her a final time or attend the funeral.A global campaign is under way to remind Iran that it has legal and moral obligations to treat its religious minorities with justice – the Five Years Too Many campaign. Amnesty International says of the Seven,

Although they have done nothing more than peacefully practice their religion, they were convicted on serious, but baseless, charges including "espionage for Israel," "insulting religious sanctities" and "propaganda against the system." They had also been charged with "ifsad fil arz" or "corruption on earth." All seven had originally been held in Section 209 of Evin Prison in Tehran, which is run by the Ministry of Intelligence, but they were moved to Raja'i Shahr (Gohardasht) Prison in Karaj—used to house violent criminals--in the middle of August 2010. The conditions at Raja'i Shahr Prison are notoriously unsanitary and squalid.

Theological regimes are notorious for their persecution of people of religions and faiths which are not exactly the same as that sanctioned by the State. Iran is no exception to this rule and it is not alone either. I am not a particularly religious person. However, persecuting people because of their religion does not belong in a modern world, or any world for that matter. Of course, theocracies don't belong either. It is interesting how those though who claim to be the most religious of the religious are the most likely to persecute to the hilt other believers who happen to believe in the "wrong" god...or practice their faith in the "wrong" way.Sick.The following is from (and with a note of irony) The Hindu.

Appeal to Iran to release Bahá’í prisoners

Staff Reporter

Several eminent citizens came together at Bahá’í House in New Delhi on Tuesday to express solidarity with the seven Bahá’í leaders and other prisoners of conscience in Iran. Senior BJP leader L. K. Advani along with former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee, convenor of Working Group on Human Rights in India Miloon Kothari, and Professor of Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University Amitabh Kundu signed an appeal which would be sent to the Iranian Embassy and the Ministry of External Affairs.

Mr. Advani stated it was disturbing to see the Bahá’ís being subjected to torture and persecution in Iran. “For the success of democracy, the most important attribute is tolerance to the diagonally opposite point of view. Intolerance is greatest in the field of religion, where a person who subscribes to a form of faith is reluctant to accept any other form of faith,” he said.

Mr. Sorabjee said the test of any nation’s claims of being civilised and democratic is the way it treats its minorities. “Ultimately history has shown that the forces of spirit will overcome the forces of the sword. I am sure this will happen in Iran and our hearts go over to the Bahá’ís, who have been subjected to so many human rights violations. I hope that the authorities have a good sense to at least release them.”

Mr. Kothari applauded the statement released by four UN Special Rapporteurs for the release of seven Bahá’í leaders and other prisoners of conscience.

“Religious freedom itself is a cornerstone of democratic citizenship. I think it’s very important that we collectively urge the Indian Government to put pressure. The persecution has reached the level that we need to address the Prime Minister and others and say that they have to publicly condemn Iran for the religious persecution of the Bahá’í,” he said.

Prof. Kundu argued that the Iranian Government was not applying the international laws and covenants. “I totally agree that five years is too much. Let us raise our voice to the Yaran, our friends in Iran.”

In her message, Planning Commission member Syeda Hameed argued that the continuous persecution of the Bahá’ís was inimical to the tradition of democracy and freedom which Iran has always prided itself with. “Protection of the rights and liberties of minorities is the international covenant that binds Iran, as it binds all other state parties. Iran should free these seven women and men in the true spirit of Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Dr. Hameed said.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

No one much wants to talk about or has ever talked about the Nazi extermination campaign waged against the homosexual population of Germany and Europe.Now, someone is and has been...in South Africa where treatment of gays is a long way from swell. Currently on display at the Durban Holocaust Center until the end of the month, an exhibition of archival photographs, testimonies and video clips "In Whom Can I Still Trust" explores this largely untold history of the persecution of gay people by the Nazis.Developed by IHLIA (Homodok/Lesbisch Archief Amsterdam), the exhibition has been redeveloped for South Africa. According to Mamba.online:

...organisers say that in light of continued discrimination, homophobia and prejudice towards members of the lesbian and gay community in South African society, the exhibition has considerable relevance to the country.

Through additional panels, the exhibition will highlight these challenges and the progress that has been made in protecting sexual minorities in South Africa.

Videos from the new ‘It Gets Better South Africa’ project will form an important part of the "In Whom Can I Still Trust exhibition." A diverse group of high profile individuals have teamed up with students from the University of Cape Town and University of Pretoria to create a collection of videos that discourages homophobic bullying. Amongst those inteviewed in the videos are struggle hero Ahmed Kathrada to track superstar Oscar Pistorius.

“This exhibition tells a specific narrative... of a group of people who were targeted during the Nazi area simply because they were homosexual. They were seen in Nazi terms as not worthy of love.

“Through the exhibition and the Holocaust centres, we are able to take history out of numbers and personalise it and we are able to honour victims. When I first saw this exhibition, it was in Dutch and I thought if we could relate it to South Africa, it would be great. There are so many murders related to homosexuality happening in real time in our country,” Freeman said.

“I felt like we needed to bring this exhibition here in order to engage with our own issues, since it talks about the consequences of prejudice and talks about society.”

The Cape Times reports about the murderous persecution of gays in Nazi Germany:

No one wanted to talk about it. It was considered the past. So is it any wonder that many people, including Mueller and Professor Pierre de Vos who made the opening speech at the exhibition, were unaware of the fate of homosexuals during the Third Reich until well into adulthood?

One can only wonder at the trauma of never being able to speak of what happened after surviving eight years first in prison and then a concentration camp just because of your sexual orientation.

The background to the exhibition In Whom Can I Still Trust? is this. After World War II, homosexual survivors were still considered criminals and there was no compensation for them, unlike other survivors.

It was only in the 21st century that they were finally recognised as survivors of Nazi atrocities. And in the form of an internalised homophobia, they sometimes blamed themselves for atrocities perpetrated against them.

It must be pointed out that before the rise of Nazism, most homosexuals considered themselves Germans first and homosexual second, in the same way that many German Jews felt. Nazism grew in stark contrast to the enlightened Weimar Republic where women could vote and homosexual society flourished. Berlin was considered the gay capital of the world – think Christopher Isherwood’s perspicacious and decadent Berlin stories.

The Nazis considered homosexuality a contagious disease to be corrected in concentration camps as it deprived the German nation of children. And although they were never put into gas chambers, homosexuals were systematically destroyed, worked to death, experimented on and castrated. Of the 100 000 homosexuals arrested, between 10 000 and 15 000 died in camps. And paragraph 175 was revoked a mere 44 years ago.

Just last month gay rights advocates decried the deaths of three teenage boyus who were tortutred to death in a so called "conversation camp" in South Africa. The teens died after being starved and tortured at a camp designed to turn them into ‘men’. One of the teens, Raymond Buys, died two weeks after being put on life support two months into a three-month "training course" provided by Alex de Koker's Echo Wild Game Rangers camp. The 15-year-old Buys had brain damage and a broken arm and bruises at the time, and had emerged severely malnourished, dehydrated and covered in cigarette burns.

This despite the fact that in South Africa, not only is homosexuality allowed, but lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders (LGBT) also have had the right to marry and adopt children for years. To this day, it is still the only country in Africa to allow such freedoms. Still gay bashing attacks are common in the country.

In a report from the Voice of America, it is written,

Discrepancies between the legislation and the reality within South African society can be explained by the context in which the current South African constitution was drafted, says Noel Kututwa, Southern Africa director for Amnesty International.

After the white-minority rule ended in the 90s and Nelson Mandela's party took power, a new constitution was drafted with a core focus on equality for everyone, with no exception.

"And as part of the fight for freedom, justice and equality that South Africa went through, the African National Congress, then led by former president Nelson Mandela, was anchored around human rights," said Kututwa.

Kututwa says South Africa's LGBT community was included in that concept of human rights, or rather, was not excluded. The debate about their rights came later on, when the constitution was already adopted.

"At the time that it was adopted, it was really futuristic," said Kututwa. "It was even going beyond what even the country was even ready for at that time. And that [became] quite clear when one looks at gay and lesbian rights, that it is a contentious issue. There are certain sections of the society with the South African society who don't accept those rights."

Organized by Amnesty International and the local LGBT rights organization Ekurhleni Pride Organizing Committee (EPOC) a memorial day for those murdered for their sexual orientation was held this April 24. That day marked the two year anniversary of the murder of LGBT activist Noxolo Nogwaza. She was raped, stoned, and stabbed to death in 2011. Two years after the 24-year-old’s death, the investigation into her murder has made no progress, and her killers remain at large.

South Africa has recently seen an upsurge of what appear to be hate crimes, targeted at people because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

The following is from a story last February on the exhibit printed in the Daily Maverick.

‘In Whom Can I Still Trust’: The Holocaust’s pink triangle

REBECCA DAVIS

An important new exhibition at Cape Town’s Holocaust Centre reminds us of the sometimes under-acknowledged persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. ‘In Whom Can I Still Trust’ serves a second purpose, too: to highlight the gulf that exists between South Africa’s liberal constitutional provisions for gay people, and the lives of fear and danger that many still endure. By REBECCA DAVIS.

An estimated 100,000 homosexuals were arrested during Adolf Hitler’s regime in Germany. Of these, about half were convicted and sent to prison, to atone for their “crime” through hard labour. Some were released after their prison terms, but between 10,000 and 15,000 – the ones suspected of having seduced more than one partner – were promptly dispatched to concentration camps. There, they wore a pink triangle on their sleeve to mark them out as homosexual. Around 60% of them died.

Today, the pink triangle has become a mark of gay pride, reclaimed as a symbol of defiance and unity in a way that would be far less likely for, say, the yellow star that denoted Judaism. Speaking at the exhibition’s launch on Tuesday night, curator Klaus Mueller argued that the reason why a Nazi invention could become a symbol of gay pride was that there are so few concrete facts or memories about homosexuals in concentration camps in the public understanding. Very few people can call the names or faces of those affected to mind today.

This is largely because homosexuality remained a deeply contested identity long after Hitler was dead. Despite post-Holocaust “Never Again” pledges, homophobic legislation remained on both West and East German statutes until 1969. Homosexual survivors of the camps received neither recognition nor compensation. One survivor, the exhibition records, had his application for compensation rejected because “he was not a victim of nation-socialist injustice”. There have only been three written testimonials published by gay survivors.

As such, an exhibition like “In Whom Can I Still Trust” is clearly necessary to flesh out the missing historical record. At the launch on Tuesday, Holocaust Centre director Richard Freedman said that it had been a “long dream” of the centre to mount such an exhibition. And indeed, because much of the information is not well known, it makes for fascinating reading.

The exhibition was developed by IHLIA, the Homosexual/Lesbian Archive Amsterdam, and it incorporates photographs, archive documents, and testimonies: some of which were given personally by survivors to curator Muller. Chronologically, the exhibition explores the treatment of homosexuals in Germany (and, less extensively, Holland) from the early 20th century to the end of World War II. Under the Weimar Republic (1918 – 1933), we learn, Germany adopted a raft of social reforms, including introducing voting rights for women. And gay people had it pretty sweet, at least compared with what was to come. The world’s first gay film, Anders als die Anderen (“Different from the others”) was made in Germany in 1919. Berlin, at that time, had more than 100 gay bars.

But within 15 years, all was to change. In 1933, homosexual organisations were dismantled, and gay bars and magazines were banned. In 1934, Hitler ordered the execution of Ernst Rohm, a known homosexual who was leader of the SA (Sturmabteilung, the paramilitary brown-shirts). After this, a special department was set up within the Gestapo to focus exclusively on targeting male homosexuals. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 made it possible to arrest men merely on the suspicion of homosexuality. Lesbians had it a little easier, because they were regarded as invisible. But, as Mueller pointed out on Tuesday, central to Nazi ideology was an emphasis on motherhood and traditional gender roles. Consequently, many lesbians entered fake marriages with friends in order to escape detection.

By 1936, homophobia had become a firmly entrenched national-socialist policy, ratified by the foundation of the Reich Central Office For Combating Homosexuality and Abortion. Young students were particularly affected: after being convicted, they could not return to study at any reputable institution. Some were even stripped of PhDs. Over the next three years, well over 20,000 men would be convicted for homosexuality.

How did they manage to make so many arrests? Because the public was all too ready to turn in suspected homosexuals. “The persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany was possible on such a large scale because of the ready complicity of society,” the exhibition records. Mueller said that 62% of investigations in Berlin came after tip-offs from friends, family or colleagues. The exhibition includes excerpts of letters sent to the Gestapo: “We have lived in the same house for 12 years but in all that time he has never been out with a girl. Obviously I cannot say anything for certain, but it strikes me as very suspicious.”

Two of the survivors featured in the exhibition ended up emigrating to Cape Town. Wilhelm Tagg, born 1894, was convicted in 1936 and sent to Dachau, and then Buchenwald. He was one of the lucky ones who got out. In the camps, forced castration could also be ordered by commanders. For homosexuals in the SS or the police force, the camps weren’t an option: they faced an immediate death penalty.

The exhibition is fairly small: one is left wanting more, though it tells its story concisely and effectively. Even at this scale, though, what is clear is the extent to which pursuit of homosexuals became a Nazi obsession. The exhibition notes: “In February 1945, while whole neighbourhoods in the centre of Berlin lay in ruins, the Berlin police unit on homosexuality still had 12 civil servants working on tracing homosexuals.”

If only the same diligence that went into tracking homosexuals in Nazi Germany was devoted to protecting homosexuals in present-day South Africa. The exhibition attempts to pair the two contexts, though the union is effected slightly uneasily. While you might expect an overview of Apartheid persecution of homosexuals, the South African resources amount to not much more than a board featuring recent newspaper articles about attacks on gays and lesbians here, and the “It Gets Better” video campaign, where local (mainly straight) celebrities give messages of support to gay teens . A chilling feature, however, is a simple list of all recorded LGBTI murders in the country in the last few years. It is extensive, yet almost certainly drastically incomplete.

UCT Law Professor Pierre de Vos (and Daily Maverick opinionista) spoke to the South African context at Tuesday night’s launch. Noting that the Constitution is a “historic, inspirational” document, he nonetheless stressed that its promises to gay people have not yet been fulfilled, even though privileged people may sometimes feel like they have. “It is often not safe to be any kind of ‘other’ in South Africa,” De Vos said.

He compared the Constitution to a “prophylactic” to ensure that the mistakes of the past are not repeated, pointing out that in the Constitutional Court, the Apartheid past is often invoked by way of comparison. “This exhibition reminds us that when we remember the past, we run the risk of doing so selectively,” De Vos said. “We need to discover an uncomfortable past in which some of us were both oppressor and oppressed” – for instance, everyone who was both white and homosexual.

Speaking of the “moral amnesia” that often settles on societies after trauma, De Vos quoted Evita Bezuidenhout, who once made the point that in South Africa, the future is certain, but the past unpredictable. “We must all confront our unpredictable pasts,” said De Vos, “and not retreat into shame and silence.”

The importance of the “In Whom Can I Still Trust” exhibition, other than shining light on an often obscured part of Nazi history, is the evidence it provides of how fundamentally liberties may be eroded over a relatively short period – particularly in the name of cultural purity. In 1919, Germany was a bastion of liberalism for homosexuality. By 1939, gays were being rounded up and arrested. It’s a stark reminder not to take our freedoms for granted – and to keep an eye firmly fixed on the Constitution. DM
Read more:

Monday, May 13, 2013

It's always fun when capitalist expose each other and that is part of what today is about. Since we all know, since everyone knows, thanks to the Occupy folks, about the one percent, about income disparity, today's story comes as no surprise. Yet, even when not surprised, one can still gasp. When you read below about the CEO pay compared to the workers in the corporations they run, well, go ahead and gasp. It's sickening. It's capital. It's now.

But wait, it doesn't stop there. After you read the full post and look at the graph below from Bloomberg Business Week, don't stop. Read on to what I have added. If you are disgusted reading the Bloomberg story, you will throw up after reading the addition.

Ain't we got fun?

Disclosed: The Pay Gap Between CEOs and

Employees

Nearly three years after Congress ordered public companies to reveal their chief executive officer-to-worker pay ratios under the Dodd-Frank law, the numbers still aren’t public. The provision was included to deter excessive compensation schemes that, in the words of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), “were part of the fuel that led to the financial collapse.” Since then, the requirement has been parked at the Securities and Exchange Commission, which must develop a rule on how to calculate and report the ratio. Questions remain: Do companies have to determine their median employee compensation by an actual count or would statistical sampling suffice? How should global companies reconcile differences in wages and benefits from one country to the next? For that matter, how should investors interpret differences in compensation across industries?

Those who oppose publishing this ratio have seized on some of these questions to argue that the requirement be dropped. “We don’t believe the information would be material to investors in making investment decisions,” says Tim Bartl, president of the Center on Executive Compensation, the advocacy arm of a Washington nonprofit called the HR Policy Association.

To get a sense of what such ratios could reveal, we conducted an experiment. It compared the disclosed CEO compensation mandated by the SEC—including salary, bonus, perks, changes in pension accruals, and the value of stock-based awards—with U.S. government data on average worker pay and benefits by industry. (Most companies don’t disclose actual payroll information for employees.)

In addition to using the industry-specific averages for workers’ compensation, this ratio differs from what Dodd-Frank requires in at least one other respect: It compares CEO pay with the average for all rank-and-file employees in the U.S., while the law calls for using the median of all employees worldwide, including executives other than the CEO.

Others who’ve calculated pay ratios, such as the AFL-CIO, didn’t differentiate worker pay by industry or include employee benefits in their math. Bloomberg News did, which tended to make the ratios smaller. (The AFL-CIO’s average CEO-to-worker multiple at big U.S. companies is 357. Bloomberg’s average ratio for Standard & Poor’s 500 companies is 204; the average of the top 100 companies on our table is 495. That is, CEOs of the companies on that table averaged 495 times the income of nonsupervisory workers in their industries.) There’s no question that using industrywide averages as the denominators is not a perfect substitute for the real pay ratios Dodd-Frank calls for. If you’re a fast-food chain CEO who pays line workers well above minimum wage plus full health benefits, your ratio would still have the same low denominator as the skinflint chain that pays only the minimum.

Every company on the list was asked to comment on the ratio—and to provide their own. Only one in the top 100 came up with a number: Wynn Resorts (WYNN), which says its ratio is 251. “The outdated and incorrect figures being used, together with a flawed methodology, results in a distortion that is insulting to our employees,” Hugh Burns, a spokesman for Simon Property Group (SPG), said in an e-mail. (Simon Property is No. 3 on the Bloomberg list of the largest ratios, and CEO David Simon’s $137.2 million in compensation for 2011 was 1,594 times what the average “funds, trust, and other financial vehicles” worker is paid.) Noting that the pay reported last year is contingent on years of future performance, Burns said, “The survey creates a completely misleading result that grossly overstates and inaccurately portrays David Simon’s compensation and makes any comparison meaningless.”

The SEC has yet to set a deadline for the rule that would make pay-ratio disclosure mandatory. Commissioner Luis Aguilar, a Democrat, suggested publicly in February that companies should voluntarily disclose their ratios until the agency acts. The other four commissioners, including Chairman Mary Jo White, who took office in April, declined to comment. Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican, has introduced language to repeal the disclosure requirement. The ratio “doesn’t do anything other than play politics,” he said.

Top CEO Pay Ratios

It’s been almost three years since Congress directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to require public companies to disclose the ratio of their chief executive officers’ compensation to the median of the rest of their employees’. The agency has yet to produce a rule.

Most companies don’t disclose median worker pay, so Bloomberg calculated ratios based on the U.S. government’s industry-specific averages for pay and benefits of rank-and-file workers. This table/click here, searchable by company name, CEO or industry, shows the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index top 250 companies by ratio. Each was offered a chance to respond; their edited comments are listed.

WITHOUT CLICKING AND JUST READING ON I PRESENT TO YOU THE TOP FIFTEEN...

Peter Drucker, the celebrated management theorist, certainly thought the CEO-to-rank-and-file multiple mattered. Starting with a 1977 article and until his death in 2005, Drucker considered 25-to-1 or even 20-to-1 the appropriate limit. Beyond that, he indicated, it’s bad for business. In his view, excessively high multiples undermine teamwork and promote a winner-takes-all, “did-it-because-I-could” culture that’s poison to a company’s long-term health. “I’m not talking about the bitter feelings of the people on the plant floor,” Drucker told a reporter in 2004. “They’re convinced that their bosses are crooks anyway.” He meant the people in middle management who become “incredibly disillusioned” by runaway CEO compensation. On big executive payouts that coincide with layoffs, Drucker was unequivocal. That, he said, was “morally unforgivable.”

BUT DON'T STOP HERE BOYS AND GIRLS, READ ON, IT GETS EVEN BETTER/WORSE

FROM MONTHLY REVIEW: In the United States in 2007, it is estimated that the five best-paid hedge-fund managers “earned” more than all of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 corporations combined. The income of just the top three hedge-fund managers (James Simon, John Paulson, and George Soros) taken together was $9 billion dollars in 2007…. Pittsburgh hedge-fund manager David Tepper made four billion dollars…. If we were to suppose that Mr. Tepper worked 2,000 hours in 2009 (fifty weeks at forty hours per week), he took in $2,000,000 per hour and $30,000 a minute

According to Institutional Investors’ annual ranking of the top-earning hedge fund managers in 2012, David Tepper of Appaloosa Management was the top of the class, earning an astounding $2.2 billion in 2012. The next three hedge fund managers after him -- Raymond Dalio of Bridgewater Associates, Steve Cohen of SAC Capital, and James Simons of Renaissance Technologies -- each cleared at least $1 billion. In all, the top 25 hedge fund managers made a total of $14.14 billion in 2012, which amazingly is the lowest total since 2008. In 2011, the top 25 took home $14.4 billion.

FROM THE ECONOMIST: Pay dynamics there are usually chalked up to growth in "CEO pay", but as new researchout of the Chicago School of Business indicates, CEO salaries are peanuts compared to the change being earned in finance:

We also ﬁnd that hedge fund investors and other “Wall Street” type individuals comprise a larger fraction of the very highest end of the AGI distribution (the top 0.0001%) than CEOs and top executives. In 2004, nine times as many Wall Street investors earned in excess of $100 million as public company CEOs. In fact, the top twenty-ﬁve hedge fund managers combined appear to have earned more than all ﬁve hundred S&P 500 CEOs combined (both realized and ex ante). This trend accelerated after 2004. In 2007, it is likely that the top ﬁve hedge fund managers earned more than all ﬁve hundred S&P 500 CEOs combined.